A `MIRACLE` BORN FROM TRAGEDY

Andrew FegelmanCHICAGO TRIBUNE

A woman nine months pregnant, mistakenly believing that her baby had died in the womb, jumped off a light tower to her death Sunday afternoon in Blue Island. Unable to restore one life, however, paramedics on the scene brought another into the world.

Mark Lutey and Anthony Savino, Blue Island emergency medical technicians, arrived minutes after Connie Horan, 26, of New Lenox, had leaped from the 100- foot tower. When they turned the woman`s body over, they noticed her stomach had apparently ruptured in the fall. A baby`s legs were protruding.

''Mark and I were working along, just trying to get this baby, and out loud we were both praying `Dear God, let this baby live,` '' Savino said Monday. ''When we pulled the baby out, she started crying, which was a godsend to us.''

She weighed in at 7 pounds, 5 ounces, and was in fair condition Monday with a broken right leg in Wyler Children`s Hospital at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was transferred late Sunday by helicopter. Doctors, though also examining the baby for possible internal injuries, were saying the prospects for the infant`s survival are good.

In Blue Island Monday, people were simply calling it a miracle.

''In my 13 years on the department, I have seen three normal births in homes and we have had some bizarre suicides, but never anything like this,''

Blue Island Detective Roland Libby said Monday.

Libby was one of the officers who responded to a call about a woman squatting atop the 100-foot-tall light tower, in an abandoned railroad yard near Hoyne Avenue and 127th Street in Blue Island, at about 2 p.m. Sunday.

St. Francis Hospital in the southern suburb had called police about 2 1/2 hours earlier to report Horan was missing from the maternity ward. Her husband was in the waiting room for expectant fathers when she left.

The woman had been admitted to the maternity ward at 3:05 a.m. Sunday. Police said Monday that Horan, who was about to give birth to her first child, was worried that the baby was not alive, but that doctors thought they had relieved her doubts by letting her listen to the baby`s heartbeat through a stethoscope.

Police Officer David Schultz was about a block from the railroad yard when he heard the call. As he pulled his squad car to within 50 yards of the tower, he saw the woman jump. At the base of the tower was a gray overnight bag packed with her hospital clothes.

When the technicians arrived, Savino said, they could find no sign of life in the mother, who later was pronounced dead at St. Francis. But Savino said he noticed the baby`s feet were twitching.

''It`s hard,'' he said Monday. ''I`m happy and yet I`m sad at the same time because of the circumstances.''

The baby, since named Kristen, was taken to St. Francis Hospital, where an incubator and oxygen had been readied for the new arrival. For some hospital employees, the birth was particularly bittersweet; before taking a leave of absence, Horan had been a registered nurse in the hospital`s cardiac- care unit.

Savino speculated that because the mother`s water bag had not yet broken when she jumped off the water tower, the bag may have acted as a cushion and ensured the baby`s survival.

''Go out and look at the height of that tower and you wouldn`t believe this whole thing,'' Police Chief Dennis Greves said Monday. ''It`s a miracle.''